


For Want Of A DDS

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Super!Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 18:33:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17833919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Small changes can have rather large effects. Hermione Granger, as daughter to two engineering specialists, can attest to this better then most.





	For Want Of A DDS

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a super!Harry fic. It is, rather, a super!hermione fic...
> 
> Shameless trash posted to anonymous collection.

Phoebe and Simon Granger were knowledgeable, practical people. And, likewise, Hermione Granger

was both raised in and willingly elected to follow in her parent’s footsteps.

 

The Granger family knew that every problem had a solution, though it may not be obvious or easy. When Hermione was younger, her extraordinary intellect and thirst for knowledge set her apart from her peers, leaving her socially isolated and lonely. In response, her parents had sat down with her and explained the social niceties of the times, and how people interacted in public. Hermione soon learned how to not make an outcast of herself- Though she didn’t quite manage to find friends that could keep up with her, she was grateful nonetheless.

 

When she was slightly older still, her parents noticed she had quite the obsession with books. This, by itself, was harmless and even encouraged- The Granger household was filled with them, from the practical detailing material properties and typical uses, to the purely recreational fantasy and fiction. It was a common joke among the elder Grangers that they may as well get rid of the family bookshelf, due to the fact that no one in the house was able to keep any particular book on it for long.

 

It wasn’t her love for books that was a problem, however. It was that Hermione had a tendency to automatically believe everything printed in books was indisputably true. And, for that matter, the authority figures that had written and delivered such books were equally right.

 

As tempted as Phoebe and Simon were to allow this character flaw, for it would surely make their job as parents much easier, they knew that such a belief was incorrect, and ultimately couldn’t find a proper excuse for intentionally teaching their daughter wrong ideals and behaviors.

 

Which lent the method they cured her of this affliction no small measure of irony: One day, during the typical family reading-sessions in their free time, they had bought a spare copy of the engineering book she had been browsing of late, crossed out facts at random, and instead scribbled in random replacements that ranged from false, but believable to the utterly ridiculous.

 

Whenever Hermione looked up from her book to decry such things, they had acted surprised and told her that the changes were one hundred percent factually correct, and that they couldn’t believe anyone would have published a book with such horribly misleading and flat-out wrong information.

 

Needless to say, Hermione had learned her lesson about blind faith, whether in books or adults, rather quickly, much to her parents amusement.

 

This, however, was quite different: Hermione couldn’t bring this new problem to her parents and hope for a solution, because they were entirely apart from it. Hermione Granger was a witch, a magical, and her parents simply weren’t- So when she wanted to learn, to _know_ about this brand new world she was suddenly thrust into, she found she was suddenly bereft of the guidance she had come to rely on. And, as she passed through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, through a wall only she and her fellow magicals could pass through, leaving her parents behind, she couldn’t help but feel that the world had chosen to mirror her conundrum in a somewhat literal fashion.

 

Still: She had prepared. She had studied, purchased her supplies in Diagon Alley, researched as many entry-level topics as she could in the time she’d had before now, and now stood with her wand in one hand, and her luggage in the other. She hesitated a moment, admiring the gleaming metal of the train waiting to whisk her away to a whole new world, before taking a break and hefting her suitcase into the air with one hand, boarding alongside the throngs of other students heading for Hogwarts. After all, projecting confidence was halfway to having it.

* * *

 

The first person she met on the train was a fellow first-year by the name of Neville Longbottom. Admittedly, this was because she had been preoccupied with yet more reading, and he had only interrupted her because he needed help, but it still counted, as far as she was concerned.

 

To that end, she had quickly flipped through her schoolbooks in response. There were a number of options for finding lost things, toads included, as she explained to Neville- Summoning charms, locating charms, divining charms… But, as all of them were above First Year level, she ultimately decided they should go looking down the train for an upper-year student who could perform those spells for them on the way to the toad. With a plan in mind, she sent Neville shuffling off towards one end of the train, and went down the other way herself, packing her book back into her suitcase and bringing it along with her.

 

It was on this journey that she was introduced to the next two wizards she knew by name: Ron Weasley and Harry Potter.

 

She had been pointed in the right direction by a passing student- While they didn’t know those spells yet, they did know that the Prefects Car would be filled with people who did, and was given directions for that instead. In the meantime, she had elected to ask people if they had seen a toad as she passed, in the vague hope of simply getting lucky.

 

“Has anyone seen a toad?” she inquired, stepping into a new car. “Neville’s lost one.” It was only after she’d finished speaking she noticed there were only two people in this car, and felt slightly silly asking ‘anyone’ when she could have just them in particular.

 

“We’ve already told him we haven’t seen it,” answered one of the boys already sitting there, a red-head with his wand raised. Beside him, a raven-haired boy wearing glasses simply shook his head.

 

She took note of the wand, the strangely old-fashioned and battered glasses the other boy was wearing, and tried an educated guess. Even if she was wrong, showing interest in what others were up to was never a bad gambit for an introduction. “Are you going to fix his glasses with magic? I know that charm- Got a load of use out of it even before school started. Magic’s really useful like that,” she said cheerfully, stepping forward and taking a seat in one of the booths across from them, laying her luggage across the table.

 

“Er, no… I was actually gonna try out a spell on Scabbers here,” said the boy with the wand. At the same time, the boy with the messy hair murmured “What’s wrong with my glasses?” to himself, reaching up to run his fingers across the frame. And, indeed, now that she was past the doorway and across from them, she could see there was a fat, gray, slumbering rat on the table. Presumably Scabbers, she thought to herself, and mentally wrote it off as yet more examples of wizards having strange tastes in pets, owls and toads included.

 

“What spell? And what’s wrong with your glasses is that even I can see they’re held together with tape. I can fix that for you- May I?” she asked, stepping over and holding out her hand towards him.

 

“Er… Alright, I guess,” he mumbled, taking them off and handing them to her, looking faintly confused. She accepted the pair, placing it on the table and pulling her wand from her pocket, aiming at it with the book-described wand movements. “ _Reparo_ ,” she intoned, watching the glasses fix themselves- Lenses losing minor scratches and nicks, the tape unwinding from the middle and revealing a whole and unbroken nose-bridge beneath it. She beamed, scooping it up and offering it back to the raven-hared boy.

 

The other boy seemed impressed by this. “I’ve seen me mum use that around the house whenever the Twins break something,” he noted, looking up to her with vague interest. “Where’d you learn that already? And, wait, did you say you used it before school started? How on earth did you manage that?”

 

“Oh, it’s in the The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. Underage witches and wizards aren’t allowed to do magic in muggle areas, but I asked around, and apparently it’s perfectly fine to do it in entirely magical areas like Diagon Alley, as long as you have adult supervision, preferably your parents-” It was at this point that the boy with the black hair paused putting on his glasses, having stopped to admire them for a moment, and she noticed he’d pushed his hair aside while donning them- Revealing a very famous scar.

 

“Is that… That’s Harry Potter’s scar! Wow, is that you? I’d heard he’d be coming to Hogwarts this year. Or did you just want to look like him?” she questioned, taking a seat across from the red-head, propping her elbows up on the table as she looked across at him. It was a fair question in her mind- This “Harry Potter” figure was practically mythical, and public interest in him had stirred of late since he was apparently returning to the wizarding world for the first time, according to the rumors and idle talk around Diagon Alley. Given how odd wizards could be, she wouldn’t be surprised if it was purely a fashion choice, though she would be somewhat disapproving.

 

“No, it’s just my scar- I mean, yes, I am Harry Potter, I didn’t put it myself. Why would anyone want to copy my scar?” he wondered, obviously contemplative.

 

“Well, it’s like a costume, innit? Like dressing up as the most famous part,” opined the other boy. Actually, now that she knew one of their names, she felt a little awkward not knowing the other. “Man, I bet Fred and George totally knew about the magic thing and didn’t tell me,” he complained lightly, even as he grinned.

 

“I suppose,” she agreed easily enough. Here-” She pointed her wand at her suitcase, which popped open, three books in particular bouncing into the air and landing on the table. She quickly scurried over, collecting them, and putting them on the table, sweeping her wand across them and muttering the Index Charm. “ _Liberio.”_

 

Obediently, the books opened by themselves on the table, flipping through pages and coming to rest on the topic she’d thought about while casting it: Harry Potter. She slid one of them across to the boy in question, who blinked down owlishly at a depiction of his own scar. “You’re rather famous, you know. If you want, you can borrow these if you want to learn what people know about you- Goodness knows I would.”

 

“Yeah, that… That seems like a good idea,” he agreed, adjusting the book in front of him so he could read it. With that done, she turned to her seat partner. “Well, we both know who he is. I guess I should introduce myself, huh? I’m Hermione Granger,” she said, briefly getting distracted by the book in front of her, as all Grangers did.

 

“Ron Weasley. What was that spell? Something to tell you about famous wizards?” he questioned, glancing at the third, as of yet unclaimed book. She nudged the title, _Great Wizarding Events of the_ _Twentieth_ _Century,_ in front of him, in case he took interest.

 

“Oh, that’s just the indexing charm. I just had to learn all the book-related spells first, of course,” she admitted. Even if she didn’t have a strong passion for books herself, she still probably would have learned it for her parents. “It’s the Index charm. You just point at a book and think about what you want, and if the book has something on that topic it’ll open to it. If it doesn’t, it’ll just flip through all the pages and close itself again.”

 

It was technically a second year spell, since most first year spells didn’t have a focus requirement like that, needing just the wand motion and the words. It didn’t have much of a power requirement, though, so she had no real trouble picking it up.

 

“Wicked,” Ron opined. “I can just point at my book, and it’ll bring me to what I need so I don’t have to read the rest?”  
  
What an alien concept, she mused. “I guess? I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to read the rest, but maybe it’ll be good for homework- So you can get it done faster.” Not that she minded doing her homework, but sometimes she wanted to get through her course books so she could pick up the _other_ books she had been reading.

 

“Definitely wicked. Thanks, Hermione!” he replied cheerfully, poking his wand at the book in front of him, apparently much more interested in this spell and it’s homework-shortening potentials rather then whatever he was going to do to his rat- Assuming it was his, and not Harry’s.

 

And so, she was already taking her first steps towards making her first friends in the Magical world, grateful to her parents wisdom and forgetful of Neville’s toad and it’s whereabouts in equal measure.


End file.
